This buildup produced a balance of nuclear forces approximately as
shown in table 2.372 Chapter TenTable 2. Nuclear Weapons
1970 1980
Long-range bombersUSA (^512348)
USSR 156 156
Submarine-launched missiles
USA 656 576
USSR 248 950
ICBMs
USA 1,054 1,052
USSR 1,487 1,398
Total nuclear warheads
USA 4,000 9,200
USSR 1,800 6,000
Clearly, by the beginning of the 1970s, substantial equality had
been achieved in the sense that each power was in a position to wreak
such damage on the other that building additional missiles seemed
wasteful. A five-year Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), signed
in 1972, accordingly set a ceiling on such weaponry. This did not,
however, halt the arms race. Research and development teams merely
shifted attention to other kinds of weapons not mentioned in the
treaty for the good reason that they did not yet exist. By the end of the
1970s therefore, several new weapons systems were ready to make
the transition from experimental laboratories to production lines. But
which weapons to build and how much of the nation’s resources to
commit to the escalation of the arms race remained, in 1981, a dis
puted matter in the United States. No doubt similar disputes were in
progress within the Soviet Union, even though public airing of
alternatives, such as was necessary in the United States to persuade
Congress to vote funds, did not take place.
self-propelled torpedoes to increase their range from 220 yards when first invented in
1866 to 2,190 yards in 1905, but only six to rise to 18,590 in 1913, whereas the range
of the Polaris missiles, installed in U.S. submarines for the first time in 1959, increased
from 1,200 to 2,500 miles in a mere five years. For torpedo ranges see Edwin A. Gray,
The Devil's Device (London, 1975), Appendix; for Polaris ranges see SIPRI Yearbook,
1908 – 69 (London, 1969), p. 98.
Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Yearbook 1981. table 2:1,
p. 21.